Anyone have Satellite Internet
Does anyone have any experience with DirectPC? http://www.direcway.com
I can’t get DSL or cable, and the phone company has taken bandwidth away from my dial-up. I am now at a whopping 9600kbps.
I know the costs involved and there is a limit on downloads (don’t know how much yet)
I’m more interested in experiences with the company as a whole, and average connection speed.
So, any thoughts?
I have it. I live out in the sticks and it’s the only broadband option for me.
It’s good enough for jazz. Big downloads go quick and it’s bi-directional.
Electrical storms can give it fits, though. And sometimes there’s an abundance of lost packets.
And specific questions?
I didn’t go for it because of the time delay in first person shooters.
A half a second to travel from the satellite to the PC is insigficicant when downloading an mpg, but a loser in games. If I paid that much money, I’d want to be an LPB. 
I currently have DTV and get a lot of snow. Hardly ever have any problems with reception. Not too many electrical storms.
The latency is kind of a drag, but whatcha gonna do?
One think that is a problem for me is that I putting an addition on my house. Thats where I want to put the dish, but it won’t be ready for a year or so. If I get it now, I will want to move it later. Since I will already have the equipment, I hope it won’t be another $575 installation fee.
Hmmm.
'Bout what kind of speed can I expect?
FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE FUCKING DOLLARS?
I had mine installed AND had a network put in AND bought the gear for about $750!!!
Find another provider. Anyone.
The hardest part is the dish aiming. Other than that it looked pretty straightforward.
Speed: I’ve clocked it up to 1.5Mps. The sonofabitch can fly when conditions are right.
The $575 includes the gear. Its the number quoted on the DirectPC site.
I wish they would let me hang the thing, then they can come out and aim it. I’m building a two story addition myself, I think I’m capable of setting 4 lag bolts.
Actually, the aiming of it isn’t too difficult, either (takes two people though).
On the installation, not only do you need to run (RG6?) coax from the dish to your satellite modem (normally next to your computer), you also need to run a conductor down to a proper ground. Dishes can be lightning magnets (not to mention problems with static electricity).
The latency can be a pain in the but, but if you don’t really have needs for interactivity (like realtime videoconferencing or realtime games), and you have no other broadband option, it ain’t so bad.
There are some advantages. Since satellites, by their nature, are broadcast oriented, DirecPC allows you to “subscribe” to specific websites, and setup a cache on your PC. That way, overnight, they can broadcast all of say, USA Today’s website, and in the morning, you can browse the site with no delay at all (pulling the content from the cache on your harddrive).
If you have no other broadband alternatives, and it won’t break your budget, I’d recommend it.
I wasn’t aware of any restrictions to prevent you from hanging it yourself. Back in the day, that’s what I did.
Skyvision has the sat downlink, phone uplink for $30.00 a month and $100.00 equipment using existing C or Ku band satellite equipment.
Yeah, I looked at something like that. But that phone line uplink didn’t cut it for me.
About how much is your monthly bill? Does it depend on hours of use? Other factors?
I can’t get anything except 56k modem internet service here, and have wondered about sat. internet.
We already have DirecTV with the small dish. The dish and other equipment was given to me, and two of us installed and aimed it ourselves, so installation isn’t that mysterious. At least for the TV.
If you uplink and downlink on the sat, you need another device to send to the satellite. The pizza dish only receives.
My cable on a stick, Dish Network, offers Netlink DSL. What the hell does DSL have to do with satellite? An effort to counter the other guy’s real satellite IP, I guess.
Yep. We’ve got an oval-shaped white dish that gets us up and down broadband plus the DirecTV signal. Sweet.
The broadband bill is seperate from the TV bill and it’s about $55 per month. That includes 5 pop accounts and some amount of web space that I’ve never bothered to explore because I have my own elsewhere.
That charge is unlimited time. There’s no controls at all.
I already have DirecTV television service, and installed and aimed the dish myself - including 100’ of buried cable. I wonder about the internet service:
Yes, you need a different dish. And it points at a different Hughes bird so your current point won’t work.
The old co-ax cables should work. Note, however, that different cables run from the dish to the satellite modem than run to the television.
Effectively you’d need to run cables from the new dish to the TV boxes AND run cables from the dish to the satellite modem. Then from the modem to the PC you’ve set up as the server then from that machine to the client machine. Piece of cake!
There’s also some software to install.
And to set it up you need a modem with a phone line. It uses that to call out, verify your location, and assign your base a transponder ID code so you’ll be recognized by the Direcway network. Be warned.
But it’s the last time you’ll need a modem.
Thanks Jonathan Chance!.
We’ll be thinking about it. In general, we don’t do a whole lot of high-volume traffic, but when people send us an animeted card or pictures, it can take several minutes to download.
Same here, but, I believe the big difference is the up-load part. Needs to be a little bit more fine tuned to get a good up-load back to the satallite.
Just a guess on my part I suppose.
Gonna do it I think. Hope my current 96kpbs connection will be enough to set up the account.
Oh, yeah. It just swaps a VERY small initialization file. Just a confirm of who you are and where you’re at with the Hughes base station in Maryland.